An audience member opened the program by asking the panelists whether the prime minister would be taking a risk by calling a double dissolution for 2 July, given the electorate seemed to support the Labor party’s proposal for a royal commission into the banks more strongly than the government’s case for re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) .

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“I think Turnbull is taking quite a big risk, actually,” Hewson responded. “I was very surprised he didn’t go to an election almost straight away when he became leader. I think he could have said, ‘Look, I don’t have a mandate’, set some broad directions and I think he would have done very well in that election.

“Since then of course his popularity has waned, his net satisfaction rating is now negative.”

The latest Newspoll has Labor ahead by two percentage points in two-party preferred terms (49% to 51%). An Ipsos poll also released on Monday shows the government and Labor at 50% each in the two-party preferred stakes. However, Newspoll has Turnbull still ahead of the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, as preferred prime minister.

Hewson, who led the Liberal opposition from 1990 to 1994, went on to say that the election would be “a close contest”.

“I think Shorten is a person who runs on confidence, he’s had a bit of a boost to his confidence in recent days so he’s looking slightly better while Turnbull’s been struggling,” he said.

The prospect of a double-dissolution election and the merit of Labor’s proposed royal commission into misconduct in the financial and banking sectors dominated the questions faced early in the program by the panelists, which also included journalist Caroline Overington, social commentator Jane Caro, Western Australian Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan, and government whip and Liberal member for Herbert Ewen Jones.

“I have a sense the government seems very frightened by the royal commission,” one questioner put to Jones. Another audience member asked: “Why let the Labor party steal the march on public opinion by defending people as unpopular as bankers?”

But Jones described Shorten’s calls for a royal commission as nothing more than “a wonderful political stunt”. He said there was nothing to be gained from holding a royal commission into banks because the Australian Securities and Investments Commission already had the powers to prosecute, echoing comments made by Turnbull earlier this month.

MacTiernan responded that the Labor party believed a royal commission was necessary because “there’s a cultural issue here that is driving this bad behaviour at the banks”.

“We do think this is a systemic matter that has to be dealt with. We really have to look at whether or not that just looking after shareholder value is in fact driving a very negative culture so we think that there is a very strong case for a royal commission,” she said.

She added that it was “amazing” how poorly Turnbull had performed since becoming prime minister.

“I think none of us expected that he would have backed himself into such a corner after starting off with such a huge popularity,” she said. “I think now he’s found himself really longed into this double dissolution, even though it’s actually... not in fact going to give him a better result in the Senate, [he] may even go backwards in the Senate.”

Overington said that the public did not want a royal commission into the banks, “and I don’t think they particularly wanted a royal commission into the unions either”.

“I think the public would like the government to get on with governing,” she said.

However, the latest Ipsos poll found 65% of voters supported a royal commission into the banking and finance sectors, while 26% were opposed.

Caro urged both sides of government to stop using royal commissions for political purposes, a suggestion that was met with applause by audience members.

“We had a royal commission into the unions for basically what I saw as political posturing, and now we’re getting payback, a royal commission into the banks as a form of political payback,” she said.

“This seems to me a misuse of royal commissions. I think the royal commission, for example, into institutional child sexual abuse is an incredibly important thing and has been very, very valuable forAustralia and for a great many people and for the future of our society.

“[But] using them as a kind of stick to beat the people you oppose is debasing the currency, and that worries me a great deal.”